


Trevor Belmont, Left On Read

by orphan_account



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Bottom Trevor Belmont, F/M, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Pre-Threesome, Roommates, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Texting, Threesome, Threesome - F/M/M, frenemies to lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-10-17 10:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17558762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Adrian 'Alucard' Tepes returns to his childhood home to take responsibility for the old Tepes family estate, now converted into apartments. Its two tenants, Sypha Belnades and Trevor Belmont, are quick to welcome him and then piss him off, respectively. Sypha is as curious about their mysterious landlord's son as he is eager to dodge her questions. Trevor is as drunk and shitshowy as water is wet. Alucard agrees to exchange phone numbers in case of emergency, and things quickly get weird in the group chat.





	1. doorbell broken

The scaly old Victorian didn’t look any better under the moonlight.

It should have flourished there, with the lack of upkeep disguised in the dark, and shadow filling out the patchy trees. The moon hovering overhead should have lent it a certain spooky charm.

It didn’t.

Adrian Tepes squished an old cigarette butt with the toe of his boot, leaned against his car, and glared across the street at the once-fashionable Tepes family estate.

He could remember this street, even though most of it was in the same decrepit condition as the house itself. The manicured lawns had given way to fenced-in yards with dogshit in them, the topiary hedges taken down to make room for driveways with basketball hoops in them.

3:13 AM wasn’t the time for examining one’s class related biases, so he let himself be sour about the state of the neighborhood by pretending he was only disappointed to see it so changed. Because of his childhood. Yes.

His childhood.

Approaching the house, he stopped at the sidewalk and looked down. There, left years ago in fresh-poured cement, was the print of a small hand. Scrawled alongside it, worn and blurry enough to be almost illegible, was a name:

_Alucard._

Sighing, spinning his key ring around his finger, Alucard walked up to the old house and mounted the stairs. Paint was peeling on the porch. The doorbell was missing; someone had written a note and taped it on the inside of the front door. _Doorbell broken,_ it said, unnecessarily. _Please knock!_

Adrian Tepes, or Alucard (as he supposed he ought to be, back at the house of his childhood), didn’t knock. He unlocked the front door and slipped into what had been the foyer.

Stairs spiraled upwards to his left, towards the rooms upstairs. He knew if he followed the stairs, that he would come to an oak door, which had been so intimidating to him in his youth. That’s where his father’s studies had been. He hadn’t been allowed in there as a child, and he remembered sitting on those bottom steps chin in hands, gazing upwards and feeling both spooked, and a little forlorn. He didn’t go up them now. _That’s where the second tenant is living._

To his right was another door, this one new to him. It was cheap looking; someone had tried to stain the wood to match the rest of the house, but the result was glossy, and chipped. They had fitted it with an obnoxious accent doorknob. The number 1 was painted off-center at eye level, and a peephole was installed underneath.

Alucard glared into the peephole and moved on down the hall.

Every doorway he remembered, to the parlor, to the dining room, was closed behind a new, ugly door. One doorway, the broad entry to the sitting room, had seen the walls taken down and replaced entirely. What had been an open house was now cleanly bisected.

He had known the pictures, the paintings, the flowers would be missing, but he hadn’t thought about how different the air would feel. It was stiller, now. He could tell there were no windows open. Probably for the better; they were quarantined, at least, from the smell of charcoal grills in neighboring backyards, and cigarette butts disintegrating in rain puddles.

And, of course, the dogshit.

Alucard reached the end of the hall and lifted the curtain on the window there. The glass was filthy, so it was difficult to see, but he knew the garden was gone. They had paved a parking lot in from the alley. He could see the tenants’ cars parked out there, and beyond the cars, a stretch of wrought iron fencing that had survived the purge of everything Tepes. Even without detail, memory filled in the blanks of what he was seeing. He remembered sitting under his mother’s monumental sunflowers, and how the neighbor’s blackberry shrub leaned over that fence and dropped berries all summer long. His mother hadn’t minded it, because it brought all kinds of birds.

There had been a granite birdbath, too.

He wondered if it was still tucked away somewhere.

He dropped the curtain and descended the stairs to the basement. He passed the racket of the first tiny room, which held the washer and dryer. The dryer sounded as though it was thwacking the wall with every rotation. Putting that first on his list of awful shit to fix, he passed under a flickering lightbulb (just a lightbulb, dangling from the ceiling, no lamp) and reached for the faceted glass doorknob of the final door, seeing the reflection of his fingers briefly before he clasped and turned the knob.

The last of his memories dissolved as the door finished swinging open, and he flicked on the light.

Empty.

The basement had been thoroughly scoured. Construction hadn’t bothered to divide this off as they had the upper levels; there were only support struts left, and stripped walls and floor, and everywhere, boxes and boxes of storage.

It still stank of the fire.

Injury tried to ripple through him, but Alucard, who had been anticipating pain since the moment he stepped foot on the property, only chuckled.

A couch lay out, and not an old familiar couch, but something that could have been grabbed off of any curb. It couldn’t decide if it wanted to be yellow or green. A low, shitty table sat next to it, holding an ashtray and three empty beer bottles with the labels peeled off. Abandoned by construction. And that was it.

That was right; he hadn’t bothered to call ahead, had he? He hadn’t arranged for a bed, a bath, any amenities at all. Somehow, despite all his planning and coordination, a tiny part of him must have still been expecting his childhood bedroom to still be ready for him. With all its toys and sketches pinned to the walls.

“And perhaps you expected mother and father would be waiting to tuck you in, too?” he said under his breath.

He supposed he could sleep in his car.

—

Trevor Belmont woke up out of a strange, sweaty, and nightmare-infested sleep to the slamming of a car door. It was the middle of the night; he could tell because the fucking moon was shining right in his fucking eyes. He rolled over in pain, and immediately came the noise of regret. Not quite a whimper, not quite a moan. Christ, his fucking _head_. He had woken up right in the middle of the blurry and unhappy period where drunk transitioned into hungover.

And why the hell was he awake?

The hungover part of his brain wanted to blame everything, from the moon to the car door to his own dumb ass for drinking the night before, and landed on accusing the strangeness of his dreams. The still semi-drunk part of his brain wanted to puke.

Ah, yes. That was why he was awake.

He rolled over and groped in the assortment of shit beside his bed. Knocked over a bottle; he heard it clink and roll away across the floor. Kept groping. Found a pair of socks— balled up. Not clean. Tossed them away.

He accidentally grabbed the cord of his lamp. It fell to the ground, not breaking but thunking as loud as it possibly could, and it too, like the bottle, rolled away across the floor.

Was the floor not level? How could he have been staying here for two months, and not notice until now that the fucking floor wasn’t level?

No time to think about it.

He finally found what he was reaching for, hauled the trashcan to the side of his bed, and vomited.

His strange, sweaty dreams left him as quickly as the contents of his stomach.

He moaned over the trashcan for another hour, dry heaving occasionally. The moon slowly slid out of the frame of his window. Its light slipped away over the street, to a car parked under a big oak. There lay Alucard, stretched out in the backseat with his arms crossed over his chest. Neither man knew each other, but they already had one thing in common: neither of them was going to get any sleep that night.

—

Sypha Belnades slept like a fucking rock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello gals and pals this is my first castlevania fic. I was planning for this to be a quick and funny texting thing but I accidentally wrote an entire first chapter so I guess I'm doing this.
> 
> This is a modern au, with all the regular modern au amenities (cell phones, hybrid cars, condoms). This is fully poly/threeway/nonplatonic ot3 stuff. No half-assed spitroasting or eiffel tower threesome shit. Everyone is in love and everyone tops Trevor.
> 
> It will be 'slow burn' in the sense that romance takes a while to come to a head, but instead of being slow because of pining and denial, it's slow because of anger, and property damage.
> 
> hope you enjoy! I'll update every Sunday unless I get hit by a truck, or decide i just want to sit around eating ice cream watching youtubers play minecraft.


	2. mouthwash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which sypha meets alucard and trevor is just the worst

Her alarm was set to the squawking of loud tropical birds, and when it went off, Sypha Belnades’ dreams of mysterious, sparkling caves and ice magic dissolved into a chaotic vision of colorful feathers. With preternatural speed and accuracy, her hand smacked down on her phone and snoozed it. She drew it up to her face, swiped open the screen, and glared at the time with one bloodshot blue eye. She couldn’t bring herself to crack open the other one.

_It’s Saturday… I can take a day off… I can have a day off… I’m allowed to take a day off ._

She didn’t have to work hard to convince herself.

Sypha Belnades dropped her phone off the edge of the bed and rolled back into the bliss of blankets, smashing her face into the pillow.

When the doorbell rang the first time, she ignored it. She wasn’t expecting any visitors, and if it was a package, they would just leave it.

It wasn’t until she had snoozed a few more blissful minutes, trying to work her way back towards the good dream she’d been having, that her her eyes snapped open.

Wasn’t the doorbell broken?

If she had lived in a different building, she would have assumed someone had gotten it fixed. But, knowing her only housemate, that was impossible.

She sat up in bed and listened. Sure enough, there it came again. Not the old, harsh buzzer, but a new and gentle chiming.

Curiosity piqued, Sypha decided it was worth it to put on pants.

She closed her door quietly behind her, locked it, and descended a few steps so she could peek between the railing around at the front door.

There was an electrician standing on the porch, holding a toolbox, and another man signing something for him and saying “Yes, thank you…”

The hole where the doorbell had been yanked through was patched up, and as the electrician walked off down the stairs and left, the other man turned to give the button one more experimental press.

As the chime rang out, he looked up, and saw Sypha on the stairs.

He looked expensive.

It wasn’t like he had paid the handyman in hundred dollar bills out of a roll, or was toting a designer jacket over his shoulder, or anything like that. In fact, he was dressed perfectly normally. Black pants, black shoes, white t-shirt. But, those perfectly normal clothes _fit_ almost too perfectly, as if the white tee had been brought into existence specifically to house his pecs, and no one else’s.

Maybe it was his hair. He had a lot of it— much more than she did. It was _nice_ hair, too, with a little flounce, that casual hint of a curl that many girls spent tearful hours in the mirror trying to articulate. Blond. Not bleached platinum, but a flaxen color he had to come by honestly, unless he was doing his eyebrows, as well.

He looked at her, and she at him, until he cocked an eyebrow and she realized she was staring.

“Hello,” she said, descending the step with a little wave. “I’m Sypha. Did you fix the doorbell?”

“Yes.” He crossed his arms to gaze critically at the electrician’s work. “How long has it been out for?”

Sypha crossed her arms, too, because she hadn’t bothered to put a bra on. “I’m not sure,” she said, realizing that she hadn’t bothered to brush her hair, either. Not that he seemed particularly judgmental, or that she feared judgment, but it was a little awkward standing next to obvious money in her yoga pants and the shirt she had slept in. “A month at least. We have a lazy landlord; nothing gets fixed around here.”

He looked at her without emotion. “My father owns this property. I’m Adrian Tepes.”

She clapped her hands over her mouth.

“It’s all right,” he said, warming a little at her reaction, and smiling as he looked down the hall. “Maintaining this place hasn’t been… high on his list of priorities. That’s why I’m here.”

“Did you live here before?” she asked. He had the light of nostalgia in his eyes.

“Mm, yes.” He nodded and leaned against the doorframe. “When I was a child.”

Sypha made a connection, smiled, and clapped her hands together. “Don’t tell me… Alucard?” He looked at her in surprise, and she laughed; she was right. “The little handprint in the sidewalk. That was you, wasn’t it?”

He smiled, and raised his shoulders and his hands in an admission of ‘you got me’. “That was a long time ago.”

A pause passed between them. Not an uncomfortable one.

“So, are you staying?” she asked. She knew that theoretically there were still empty rooms in the house. It was odd, actually, the amount of space that went unoccupied, and how much of it was inaccessible by normal means. The old Victorian seemed to have a life of its own. Sypha wasn’t sure how many rooms it even held, or where its stairs led, and she had been living there several months now. “Or, just doing some maintenance?”

“Staying to oversee some renovations. Make sure things are… in proper shape.” He frowned over something that wasn’t there. “I’m not sure how long it will be. What do you think of the condition of the house?” He turned his attentions suddenly on her, away from whatever thoughts were troubling him.

She floundered. “Oh, well-” Was there a polite way to say that someone’s childhood home was infested with magic, that it smelled like secrets and that was the whole reason she was staying there, and that she didn’t know if it was rats or faulty electronics or something more ominous but the power went out periodically, oh and also the floors weren’t level and she was pretty sure rooms changed position. And that her sole housemate periodically did loads of bloody laundry and refused to talk about it. All she could figure was that he was in a fight club.

“It could use some work,” she said.

He smiled at her restraint. “Then it’s a good thing I’m here.”

She beamed at him, and he thumbed over his shoulder indicating he had to get things from his car. When he turned his back, she finally uncrossed her arms, and hurried back upstairs to put on a bra, and stuff some candles and magical tomes under her bed. She doubted Alucard would come busting in unannounced, but just in case, she didn’t need evidence of magic lying out in the open. That would make for a long and complicated conversation.

By the time she poked her head out again, fully dressed this time, he had gone.

Shit.

She hadn’t gotten the chance to warn him about Trevor.

—

The rapping on Trevor’s door broke open his head, and poured sound directly into his hangover.

He was still draped over the edge of his bed where he had passed out after puking, trashcan still poised to receive his offering, one arm dangling off the mattress and the other stuffed under his body, where it had gone completely numb. “Maybe if I don’t say anything,” he mumbled into his armpit. “She’ll go away.” _Please, God, let her just go away._

“I know you’re in there, Belmont! I heard you come in last night.”

It would have been hard to miss. He had fallen down the stairs.

She rapped once again; he knew she wasn’t going to stop.

Skull in a vise, he closed his eyes against the evil sun and groped around his bedside table, searching for his greatest ally against even the worst of hangovers. “Where are you, you little bastards…” There. “Ha. Found you.”

Trevor Belmont pulled out and put on a pair of novelty pink sunglasses. One of the plastic frames was shaped like a margarita.

No shame.

Finally opening his eyes, he rolled out of bed, dodging the vomit trash, cramming together a mental list of shit he had to do before opening the door. Stand up, done. Pants. Pants. He found a somewhat clean pair of sweatpants. What else— his breath. Brush his teeth? Nope. He almost gagged at the idea of a toothbrush getting anywhere near the back of his throat. Mouthwash it was.

Halfway through the first gargle, he remembered that the sink was clogged; he looked down, at the mess of fur, blood, and… some kind of demonic ooze.

He’d been so preoccupied with washing it off his fucking face, he hadn’t spared a thought for the plumbing.

“ _Belmont_!”

Functioning with about half of a crispy brain cell, his mind spun a decision-making wheel at random. He swallowed the mouthwash.

Coughing spearmint, he unlatched and undid all the locks to his bedroom, and repeated the process at the front door. He tried to open it; it stopped after two inches with an angry _crack_. ...missed a lock. Now the latch dangled half out of the wall, exposing broken wood. He lamely unlatched it and pushed the door open into the hallway.

Sypha Belnades was standing there. Seeing him, and probably smelling him, her nose wrinkled.

For two people living in the same house without interacting more than was absolutely necessary, they were on… decent terms.

When he’d first moved in, Sypha’d made a heroic attempt to be friendly. One night, catching him coming in, she’d presented him a loaf of banana bread— ‘a kind of, welcome to the building gift,’ she’d called it, in that accent, looking all blue-eyed and well-meaning.

Trevor, who had just returned from gutting a minotaur, after an hour of having his ass (and his testicles, twice) soundly kicked, possibly nursing a concussion, had said, “Do you have any beer? I’d rather have beer.”

He’d learned the real meaning of the expression ‘daggers for eyes’, then.

And just like that, he had cemented his status as that ingrate across the hall.

Which worked great for him. He didn’t need a friend, and he definitely didn’t need a cozy housemate delivering baked goods at strange hours of the night, accidentally stumbling into his hoard of stakes, swords, consecrated weapons, and huge growing pile of dirty laundry. (At this point he thought there might be something living in it.)

He crossed his arms. “What do you want?”

Sypha stared at him, long enough that he glanced down to make sure he had actually remembered pants.

“Are you wearing sunglasses… indoors?”

“I have a hangover,” he said. _‘I’m not surprised,’_ she said with her face, but not out loud, because she didn’t have to. “ _What_ do you want?”

She mirrored him, arms crossed. “I wanted to let you know that Adrian Tepes is moving in.”

“Adrian Te— Who?”

“Adrian Tepes, son of Mr. Tepes, you know, from your lease agreement? Our landlord?” She widened her eyes at him.

“Oh, shit. Right.”

Mr. Vlad Dracula Tepes.

The ‘Dracula’ part wasn’t on the lease, but it was on Trevor’s corkboard of villainous figures in his room, the kind of corkboard with pictures, tacks, and strings connected in an order that made sense only to him. And then, only sometimes. A few others had made the list, figures that floated in and out of mythology, mostly immortal things that slept for entire generations of his family, but that his bloodline was ever watchful of.

An Adrian Tepes was not on the list.

Well, figured Trevor, if he was a son of Dracula, that made him a vampire. That had to make things pretty simple. “When’s he moving in?” He tried to think of how quickly he could get ahold of holy water; he had alienated every priest in a thirty mile radius, so it was going to be tricky.

“He’s already moved in.”

“He what?”

Sypha appraised his alarm with a raised eyebrow. “Yes. He’s moving into the basement, I think.”

“That figures.” He snorted.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked sharply.

“Uh— nothing.”

“Anyway, that’s why I wanted to warn you.” She glanced behind him, and her nose wrinkled again, at what little of the mess was in view. Mostly the corner of a couch with the stuffing coming out of it. “He’s having maintenance work done, so he’ll probably want to look at your rooms. I don’t know what you’ve got in there—”

Definitely not a hoard of stakes, swords, consecrated weapons, and huge growing pile of dirty laundry.

“—But I’d do some cleaning, if I were you,” she finished. “If you intend to stay.” Her voice, and expression, said she wouldn’t bat an eye to see him turned out.

They exchanged dagger-eyes for a moment— and another moment. What did she want? She was still just standing there.

Finally, she threw up her arms. “You’re welcome!” she said, and walked off with a scowl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said I'd update on the weekends, and I will update this Saturday or Sunday, but I already have several chapters written and I wanted to get this early development out of the way so everyone can get an idea of the world and the characters as they stand currently. Texting will begin next chapter!!!


	3. dear tenant,

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which we meet trevor's car and people finally start texting

It didn’t take Alucard long to make the basement livable. You could do a lot with red drapes and some oversize area rugs. The boxes of family storage, unexamined for now, went to a unit on the edge of town, the kind ringed with tall wire fences and watchmen prowling with their dogs. There was no reason to think anyone would come looking, especially after it had gone indisturbed so long unguarded in the basement, but Alucard had taken some time to etch wards into the rollup door before he left. Just in case.

He did bring one thing back.

A large marble birdbath.

He placed it in the backyard next to the surviving section of fence, kneeling to wedge it securely into the dirt, and stayed there a moment longer to observe the changes that had occurred from this height. This was the height he remembered most; just tall enough that his head was level with the birdbath’s brim, the fence still tall overhead, and the bounds of their home obscured, as if there was nothing beyond it. The isolation had been as complete as if the house were a castle encircled by a moat. Not bad. Not lonely. Perhaps alienating, but only in hindsight, after he had grown and gone away. It was peculiar to be back now that the childish magic was gone.

He looped his fingers in the acanthus pattern of the wrought iron, just like he had all those years ago, peeping through the bars like a wild thing caged in the garden.

 _I should plant sunflowers,_ he thought, and as quickly as the thought had come to him, he put it away.

He stood up, clapping dirt off his palms. He wouldn’t be staying long enough to grow flowers.

Still, as his gaze wandered the patchy grass, flowers bloomed in his mind’s eye. Lavender and chervil, borage and sweet-scented geranium. Among them, lilting belladonna, and purple spears of aconite. All of his mother’s colleagues from what she had jokingly called ‘her witchcraft’.

He turned from the memory with a sigh to return to the rear of the house.

He had to pass the tenants’ cars, parked on the uneven wedge of poured concrete. Of the two, it was easy to guess which belonged to Sypha by the process of elimination. One was a tidy white Lincoln, used, and a little worse for wear for it, but clean. The other was a ludicrous truck.

‘Teal’ didn’t quite describe the color, but what word could? The somewhat blue, somewhat green lunk of metal was accented with streaks of lost paint and embedded dirt. The undercarriage flaked with rust and one of the tires was a few puffs short of a flat. But the worst of it was (and Alucard actually winced when he saw it) that at some point, the driver’s side door had been lost, and replaced with one in hot rod red.

That would have to belong to the other tenant.

Alucard couldn’t resist a glance through the window, curious to see how deep this rabbit’s hole of grotesquerie went.

And oh… how deep it went.

Crushed cans of energy drinks accumulated in the passenger’s side in great numbers, as if someone were planning a recycling trip. Which, somehow, he doubted was the case. Wrinkled wrappers accented the pile of smashed aluminum—mostly jerky wrappers, it looked like. To judge by the truck’s contents, one would have to assume the owner subsisted entirely on Monster and Slim Jims. Alucard beheld it with the fascination born of horror. Some part of him was almost impressed.

Before he could draw his gaze away, his eyes narrowed over an oddity; there was a small crucifix dangling from the rearview mirror, next to a graying pineapple air freshener.

Alucard straightened up and drummed his fingernails on the hood of the truck. It didn’t have to be peculiar, he supposed. There could in this world exist a revolting hoarder who was also devoutly religious.

It was possible.

He moved on.

When he got up the back steps, letting the back door and its curtain swing shut behind him, he stopped himself flicking on the light. He tilted his head and listened; under the creaking of settling wood, the click and hiss of the furnace, and the rattling of the defunct drier, there was silence. Both tenants were out.

He was alone in the house.

How peculiar, to be so disquieted by the absence of two strangers. He had expected to resent their presence, resent that they walked the same halls as his mother and father, that they slept in the old study, or placed their (likely ugly) couches where the grand piano had sat. Instead, he had been… relieved. That there was something still alive in here.

“I must be lonely,” he said drily.

He took his left down to the basement steps, ignoring the dangling string of the single lightbulb, passing the door to the washroom where the drier merrily rocked. Reaching for the glass knob of his room, he paused in shadow.

There was a note wedged into the frame.

Frowning, he plucked it out. Unfolded, it read:

_I meant to give you this earlier. This is my cell #. I work weird hours so if you ever need to get ahold of me, just text any time!_

_-Sypha_

In his room, Alucard flopped down on the chaise lounge that had replaced the yellow-green sofa (now sitting out on the curb, where it belonged) and reread the note.

Text her?

He reclined his head on the arm of the chaise and gazed at the ceiling, where there was still nothing but spiderwebs, contemplating moroccan lamps and working the note between his fingers.

He pulled out his phone.

No messages, old or new. The device differed little from the factory settings. The background and lock screen were left on default, displaying only pre existing apps, and one saved voicemail.

His thumb hovered over the voicemail for a moment, then swiped it away and pulled up a new message. He entered Sypha’s number, tossing the now crumpled note onto the inset marble of the new coffee table. He had kept the cigarette dish.

_-This is Alucard. Got your note._

Send.

It wasn’t more than a minute before ‘Delivered’ switched to ‘Read’, and not another before minute he got a response.

**Sypha**  
_Welcome to the building! (:_

 

—

“Well _that_ was a shitshow.”

Trevor’s socks squelched in his shoes as he walked up the front steps.

“You’d think a baptism would be a time of celebration, of _welcome_ , but nooo, let’s get into a shoving match over a vessel of holy water that nobody was using anyway.” You would think that Ol’ Saint Mary’s a few blocks down would have forgotten about him; after all, they couldn’t _prove_ that he had taken the pontifical incense, and he couldn’t figure out how they had missed it in the first place. They’d had enough stockpiled to carry them all the way into Revelations. Fucking priests. Fucking _clergy_. Grumbling about it, he dug around in his soaked pockets for the key.

Trevor put his key in the lock, then paused. He scratched his head.

The hole where the doorbell had been was a doorbell again.

Well, fuck. The vampire really was renovating the place.

But why? To make the place more attractive, lure in more affluent victims? Maybe they tasted better.

Mystified, he unlocked the door and hoped Sypha wasn’t around to see the mess he was making.

Lucky for once. Nowhere to be seen.

Contemplating wringing his clothes out over a bucket and hoping that the musk-infused water remained holy, because what the fuck were his other options, he tiptoed his way upstairs and upstairs, squelched down the hall.

If he hadn’t already been in a pissy mood after getting dunked in a portable baptistry, he would have been when he stopped in front of his door and found a note taped to the front of it. Leaping to indignation (was he being evicted _already_? _What, my blood not good enough for you, vampire?_ ), he ripped the note off and read it.

> _Dear tenant,_
> 
> _This letter serves as formal notice of intention to access the rental property at 2500 Bran Ave on May 14th from approximately 12:00pm to 1:00pm in order to inspect the condition of the premises and identify necessary repairs._
> 
> _Access to rental property is permitted by law so long as reasonable notice is provided to the tenant. If you have any concerns or questions I can be reached by text at this number._

“Are you shitting me,” said Trevor into the empty hall.

—

Sypha opened her door after the third loud bang.

She opened it only a few inches, just enough room to snap, “Are you trying to break it down?” Just wide enough for him to see her unhappy face, tousled hair, and the blue blanket she had wrapped around her shoulders. He must have caught her napping. Her scowl turned to confusion when she actually looked at him. “Do I even want to know why you’re soaking wet?”

“It’s raining.”

She raised a palm, wordlessly, at the sun shining through the window onto the steps.

“Must have been a cloudburst.”

“Must have been.” She looked done with this conversation already. “What do you want, Trevor?”

Undeterred, he waved the note in her face. “Did you get one of these?”

Shoving him out of the way, Sypha stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind her, taking the note. “‘Access to rental property is permitted by law so long as reasonable notice is provided…..’” she read, mumbling through the rest, then looked at him, eyebrows raised. “What’s the problem?”

“I—” Realizing a beat late that ‘I don’t want a fucking vampire rifling through my things, especially the stuff I have specifically for killing vampires’ wasn’t going to fly, he made something up on the spot. “That’s my birthday. I’m gonna be busy then.”

She gave him the weirdest look, like someone looking down at a very stupid child, except upwards. “Then text him? You have a phone, don’t you?”

“That’s not the point. You don’t have a problem giving your number out to some—” Not vampire, not vampire. “Random creep who lurks in the basement, and just wants to ‘text’—” Big finger quotes. “Instead of talking face to face, out in the light of day?”

She stared at him.

“Trevor,” she said, slowly. “ _You’re_ the one I never see in the light of day.” She stuck the note back into his chest. “He already has my number, _and_ I’ve spoken to him face to face. He’s nice. You could learn from him.” She regarded his expression, mouthing wordlessly trying to compute that, then with actual curiosity, asked “You _do_ have a phone, don’t you?”

“Of course I have a phone.”

She didn’t miss the evasive sideways dart of his eyes, and hers narrowed. “Let’s see it, then.” She held out her hand.

“What? Why?”

“I’m going to put my number in it. We should all have each other’s contact information, since we’re living in the same building. In case of an emergency.”

An emergency like a fucking vampire nesting two floors down?

“Come on,” insisted Sypha, hand still out. “Phone.”

For someone a whole head shorter than him, she was hard to argue with. “Okay,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “But before you—”

She didn’t let him finish his sentence. “What is _that!_ ” An expression of horror crossed her face, not unlike the look he had gotten when he limped first into the laundry room with two black eyes and a basket of blood-stained hoodies. “Is that a flip phone?”

“...yeah?”

She snatched it out of his hands, flipped it open, and flipped it shut. She flipped it open and shut again. “Trevor, you know this isn’t the 1400s, right? I didn’t realize they still made flip phones. Is it a burner? Is that what this is?”

“It’s very durable,” he said, brow folding itself in half.

“I don’t even know how to work this.” She sounded delighted.

“You know smartphones listen to you while you shit, right?”

“How do you add a new contact? No, don’t help me.” She was absorbed. “Actually.” She looked at him again, then at the puddle he was creating on the floor. “One second.” She ducked into her room, and he heard familiar rustling noises, the sound of things being stuffed into hiding places. Sypha popped out again. “Here, come inside.” He didn’t have the opportunity to plant his feet; she grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him inside.

The towel hit him in the face.

He pulled it off his head with a sour expression. Sypha was already cross-legged on her bed, absorbed in his phone. “You know you can play tetris on this thing?” she said.

He scrunched the towel in his wet hair and looked around the room. His dignity rankled; her room wasn’t _that_ much better than his. It was definitely cleaner, in the sense that there wasn’t dirt or dried blood or dust bunnies, but it was cluttered. She had made the front room into a bedroom, and the mattress sat on the floor, no frame. She sat in a nest of blankets, surrounded by stacks of books with weird script, like Lord of the Rings looking shit. Her windows were open, the sun shining through and catching in her hair.

“Here.” She tossed his phone back, and he fumbled midair to catch it. “I added my number. It’s under S, for Sypha. Shouldn’t be too hard to find; I didn’t see any other contacts.” Drily. “And ‘Alucard’ under A.”

“‘Alucard’?”

“Adrian Tepes.”

He dangled his phone between thumb and forefinger as if she had dirtied it. “You put him in here?”

“You know he grew up in this house?” She suddenly changed gears, raising her hand at the ceiling.

It was hard to picture a vampire ‘growing up’ anywhere. Trevor always imagined them spawning from bogs.

“He was the one who left that tiny handprint out on the sidewalk.” Seeing his frown of confusion, she scowled. “The one you walk past _every day_?” He scratched his chin; it kind of rang a bell. “Back when the sidewalk was being poured, a little kid came and put their hand in it, and scribbled their name in the cement. ‘Alucard’. That was him.”

That was even harder to picture.

Sypha looked reflectively out the window. “Hard to imagine growing up in a house like this.”

“What’s your point?” He crossed his arms, leaving her towel draped over his damp shoulders.

“You should be less suspicious of strangers, Trevor. He’s just a human being.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my SO and I have a bet now that I have to finish this (I am a chronic unfinisher of fanfiction) or she'll take my monkey onesie and, I assume, throw it into the fire. so you know what's at stake if I don't update every weekend. with that, see you next sunday!!!
> 
> as usual, lmk if you see any weird typos, I will resent you for pointing out any flaws in my product but it will ultimately be better for it, thank you
> 
> also. i will prob be figuring out how I want to format the texts over the next few chapters, so if anything changes suddenly, have no fear, it is only my indecision


	4. banana bread

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> banaba bread

On his second trip back from the storage unit, Alucard let intuition guide his hand. He returned to the house with a full trunk of books— approximately, or almost exactly, an assload of books.

He unloaded them in the dark, covertly, taking care to be sure no one taking a late stroll down the alley happened to see a man casually toting four overloaded boxes one-handed. Downstairs, he didn’t immediately set to shelving but instead unboxed them one by one, like a child digging into a pile of Christmas presents. Each one, he took out individually. He turned them over in his hands, blew off the cobwebs. He ran his fingers down the dusty spines, over raised lettering, and cracked each book open gently, knowing they had grown unused to it. The most agèd of them he barely breathed upon, their pages feathery as moths’ wings, their covers crying out for fresh sewing.

They were alchemical texts and children’s books, histories and antique comedies— Goethe alongside Plautus; Gregor Mendel, adjacent to Beatrix Potter.

The pages were full of nostalgia— some more literally than the others, like the copy of _De Materia Medica_ he opened to find pressed flowers inside.

Alucard was so absorbed, he didn’t notice his phone vibrating on the table next to the cigarette dish, or hear the gentle tapping on the door over the sound of the rattling drier. Still sitting on the ground, absorbed, he only noticed that his door had crept open when, putting down the _Aurora Consurgens_ and reaching for another Pseudo-Aquinan text, he looked up and made eye contact with Sypha, lingering indecisively in the doorway.

She looked more put together than when he’d seen her last; she was wearing a bra, for one. Her hair, a middling length between bob and pixie, was pinned out of her face and tucked behind one ear. She had on a truly oversized blue hoodie that may as well have been a short dress. She was pretty, he thought— a purely objective, and very neutral thought. She carried a bundle of something, but seemed to have forgotten it as she gazed around the room, taking around the changed decor with an expression of enchantment that made her eyes seem to him especially large, and especially blue.

“Hello, Sypha,” he said, pointedly.

“Oh. Sorry!” She jumped back to herself and held up her bundle. “I brought banana bread.”

“Banana bread,” he repeated.

“A kind of, ‘welcome to the building’ gift,” she said. “I tried texting you, then knocking, but you didn’t answer, and the door wasn’t locked, so—” She shrugged.

“The door wasn’t locked, so you just came in?”

“I didn’t want to just leave it; I see mice around sometimes.” She was eyeing his books now, hungrily.

More amused than anything, he waved for her to come in and make herself comfortable, and Sypha wasted no time wading into the books and settling on the unoccupied chaise. She put the banana bread on the table next to the cigarette dish, and though she kept her hands clasped together over her knees, he could see her fingers itching to dig into the pile. He followed her gaze; she was eyeing the Beatrix Potter.

“Just unpacking some old things,” he said, suddenly embarrassed.

She didn’t miss it, and moved to assure him. “I think they’re great. I never had books when I was a kid,” she said. “My family aren’t big readers, and they didn’t keep them around. I would have loved a collection like this…” At her unspoken question, he nodded, and she grabbed _The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin_ and began to rifle through its well-loved pages. “I hoard them now. If you saw the state of the piles upstairs, you’d probably evict me on the spot. I really need to get bookshelves…”

Alucard leaned back against the side of the chaise and sighed. “I need to use mine,” he said. “It’s just as much of a mess down here.”

They both eyed the empty shelves and seemed to come to the same idea in unison.

“I’ll help,” volunteered Sypha.

“That’s not necessary,” said Alucard.

“No, it’s not,” she said. “But I’d like to help.”

He glanced at her sideways; she beamed back. He couldn’t suppress a smile. “All right,” he said. “But this doesn’t earn you a decrease on rent.”

“What about for the banana bread? Don’t I get a baked goods discount?”

“Once I’ve had some and decided whether or not it’s any good, then we’ll talk.”

They both shared a chuckle, swapped another smile, and after that, shelved his family’s books in companionable silence. The silence was broken only occasionally, by Sypha double checking where he wanted something placed, or handing him off a book she wasn’t tall enough to shelve even on her tiptoes on the stepladder, which just looked like an accident waiting to happen to him. She didn’t comment on the strangeness of any of the material until he turned and found her on the upper rung of the stepladder with her nose buried in _De Occulta Philosophia libri III_. Totally engrossed.

Alucard watched her for a minute, then asked, “Do you read Latin?”

She jolted in surprise, and the stepladder rocked underneath her. It was a good thing he hadn’t been across the room; he could have teleported to the spot to catch her, but it would have raised questions. Fortunately, he only had to move a few feet. He snagged the ladder in one hand and caught her around the waist in one motion— maybe too quickly, or too easily. She stayed blinking in his arms perhaps a moment too long; surprised by his speed, or his proximity? He righted, then released her. Sypha was still hanging onto the book with both hands, her face a little pink.

“Latin?” he prompted desperately into the awkward silence.

“Yes,” she said, pulling herself up and holding the book like a chaperone between them. “Yes, I do. I’m a— fan of languages.”

“Ah. A scholar or a polyglot? Or is it both?”

“Little of column a, little bit of column b. Mostly it’s just basic familiarity.” She shrugged. “I grew up around it; my family was always teaching me something. You could say I was homeschooled.”

“We have that in common,” he said, delicately taking Agrippa from her, to put back in his place on the high shelf. “That, and Latin.”

“What about Greek?”

“Greek?” Amused, he asked, “Is this a competition?”

“Probably not,” she said, and now that the room had thawed, he thought saw her grow almost playfully smug. “Unless you know Coptic, as well?”

He raised his eyebrows, as if unimpressed. “Do you know any languages that aren’t long dead?”

“Just French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Arabic, Hindi, Urdu, Persian, Kurdish, Mandarin, a bit of Klingon, Russian, Polish, Ukrainian… and I guess I shouldn’t count Czech, because I have only basic conversational competency.”

“Only that?”

“Máš přítelkyni?” she asked.

He frowned, as if in puzzlement, putting a finger to his ear as if his hearing was bad. “Můžete to zopakovat?”

If she had been pink before, she turned red now.

“That’s all I know,” he said, feigning innocence. She seemed to buy it. He turned his back to regard the books instead of her, stowing his hands in his pockets. “I’m afraid it’s no contest; you have me beat by a language, or ten.”

“Well, just know that you’re still beating Trevor by all of them. I’m not sure he’s even conversational in English.” Alucard didn’t have to be looking at Sypha to hear her eyes roll.

“Ah, yes. The other tenant.” His eyes narrowed; he remembered the hideous car, and the big crack among on the padlocks on the upstairs door. “I haven’t had the pleasure.”

“It’s not much of a pleasure,” she said, her words harsh, but with no malice in them. “He’s rude. And a drunk. I don’t even know what he does for work— if he does anything at all. I don’t know how he even pays his rent.”

The answer was that he didn’t— at least, not directly. Trevor Belmont’s rent came out of a mysterious account with a long history, its coffers apparently three centuries deep at least, transferred from a dead bank to the current one upon its inception. Old money. And unused money, apparently. The name ‘Belmont’ wasn’t tied to any stock or financial stakes Alucard could find anywhere. It was odd— hibernal. It wasn’t the only odd thing about the mysteriously absent tenant, but it was the latest thing making him uneasy.

“Do you know him very well?”

“Not really— not at all, actually.” Her forehead creased. He observed her expression, then the shelves.

“These are pretty well filled,” he said. “Shall we see about that banana bread?”

—

He didn’t have any cutlery or kitchenware unpacked, so they ate off plastic plates Sypha had taken from the upstairs kitchen. She cut up the banana bread with an ornate knife he was too kind to tell her was a letter opener.

It was good. Not overly sweet, like it had come from a store. It tasted rustic, almost sentimental, the flavor taken from a recipe that predated corn syrup.

He caught her eyes sweeping over the changes he’d made to the basement, seeking out the little details they had missed the first time. He watched until her eyes dipped to the floor, where they found a gap in the rugs, and she frowned. He didn’t have to follow her gaze to know she had spotted a patch of the old burn marks.

Alucard cleared his throat. “So, this other tenant—”

“Oh, that reminds me,” she interrupted, clapping her hands together. “Since he probably won’t text you— he won’t be available on the inspection date you put on his door. It’s his birthday, apparently.” She shrugged, and kind of pursed her lips and raised an eyebrow all in one motion, one that didn’t suggest much confidence in Trevor.

“His birthday?”

“But I don’t think you’ll have an easy time getting in there no matter the day,” she said.

“No?”

“No. Let me tell you,” she said, suddenly very fired up, pointing a finger. “Trevor Belmont is the dictionary definition of ‘impossible’. Not only is he rude, but he seems to take any extension of human kindness as an opportunity, or even a _personal challenge_ , to sink below it. He drunkenly sidesteps every friendly overture I make, even the most banal, reacts to small talk as if I’ve sneezed on him…”

He let her avow dislike of her housemate at length— almost ‘the lady doth protest too much’ length. He thought there was some level of attachment in it, much like one might bemoan the actions of an oft-disparaged dog who nonetheless was a much beloved member of the family. Whatever she felt about the obnoxious Belmont, it wasn’t hate.

_She must be lonely, too._

—

 **Sypha**  
Just checking to make sure you get this

 **Sypha**  
That means you have to reply

 **Sypha**  
Are you still asleep it’s 4pm

 **Sypha**  
You can’t possibly still be asleep

 **Sypha**  
I’m pretty sure your flip phone doesn’t have emojis but know that this little gray box is an unamused face

 **Trevor**  
what the fuck is an emoji

 **Sypha**  
He lives!

 **Trevor**  
did u think I was dead

 **Sypha**  
One can only hope  
**Sypha**  
then I could have your rooms  
**Sypha**  
jk  
**Sypha**  
Both the part about wanting you dead and wanting your rooms  
**Sypha**  
that would be sad and disgusting respectively

 **Trevor**  
whta

 **Sypha**  
Anyway, meet me in the kitchen  
**Sypha**  
don’t say whta again just do it ok

Sypha picked at the flaking lacquer of the kitchen table, trying too hard to look like real wood. It, like most of the furnishings of the kitchen, was shitty. The room had been a solarium, maybe, or a breakfast nook at most, until its violent conversion to kitchen years ago. A huge swath of window dominated the rear wall, looking into the backyard, which probably would have been a nice view once upon a time, but now featured her shitty car and Trevor’s shittier truck. She didn’t know where Alucard parked. Probably somewhere that birds couldn’t shit on it.

The fridge, sink, counters, and dishwasher all competed for space against the wall opposite the door, the one that must have come down like a guillotine and split the one-time solarium into its current state. Impractical for cooking, the arrangement hadn’t stopped Trevor from trying to make what Sypha could only guess was macaroni and cheese based on the shape of the blackened remnants lying carbonized in the bottom of a pot, now abandoned in the sink.

Sypha sat with her back to the window, feet up on another chair, mug of tea warming her hands, mostly enclosed in her blue hoodie. She frowned at the bread knife lying on the counter. The bread knife with a mysterious dent in it, and a mysterious non-proximity to bread. What the hell did Trevor try to do with a bread knife? Open a can? Why did he even need a bread knife in the first place? The closest thing they had to bread was pop tarts.

Ooh. Pop tarts.

Reasonably sure that Trevor wasn’t going to make an appearance, Sypha didn’t have her guard up when he shoved his head in the kitchen door and intoned “What do you want,” in the loudest, deadest voice imaginable. She was standing on top of a chair, trying to dig the box of stale pop tarts out of the arm-deep drawer of the kitchen cupboards. The predictable happened.

Trevor probably couldn’t have caught her if he had wanted to, but he could have _tried_.

Instead, he looked impassively down at her on the floor, held up his phone, and pointed at it with his other hand.

“I thought this meant we didn’t have to talk face to face,” he said.

Her eyelid threatened an angry twitch. She got up, grabbed the pop tarts, and clonked them down on the table hard enough to make him jump. She stuck her finger in his chest.

“Sit down,” she menaced.

Warily, he pulled out the chair, and because, Sypha supposed, he had to be contrary in everything he did, spun the chair around backwards to sit straddling it. Arms crossed over the back of the chair, resting his chin on his sleeve, Trevor looked at her from under the fuzzy hood of his jacket.

He looked dressed as if he had forgotten which season they were in, and dressed for all of them just in case. Under the coat, zipped up only halfway, was a shirt tattered enough to be indecent. Under that he wore athletic shorts… and flip flops. He needed to shave a week ago.

He didn’t make eye contact. Instead, he looked furtively left and right, as if anticipating an attack from any angle.

Sypha reached into the fridge, pulled out a lump of foil, and let it thump down onto the table in front of him. She sat down.

“Open it,” she said.

Looking somewhere between wary and ‘let’s just get this over with’, he reached out with one hand to peel back a bit of foil. He blinked. “Is this…?”

“Yes.”

He finished peeling back the foil, stared for a minute, then said flatly, “Why is this bread so wet?”

“It’s _banana_ bread.” This conversation was not going how she had planned, yet exactly how she had expected. “It’s not supposed to be dry.”

He sighed heavily. He leaned back in the chair, dropped his shoulders, and, with ennui, said, “All right. Why is there banana bread?”

“Do you remember when you first moved in?”

Trevor leaned back, expression becoming less guarded and more quizzical, as he scratched his chin. She saw the memory dawn on him, and he became wary again, looking back at her. “You made—”

“I made banana bread.” Fired up, she didn’t let him finish. “Because when someone moves into the building that’s the _nice_ thing to do. Are you familiar with at least the dictionary definition of ‘nice’?”

“No,” he said, with hard, flat sarcasm.

“Let me explain. What’s _nice _is being communicative, cleaning up after yourself, and accepting — with thanks — someone’s gift of baked goods, and maybe even reciprocating. _Not_ that I want to taste your cooking, and please don’t take that as an invitation.”__

__“I wasn’t going to.” He scowled._ _

__“What’s _not_ nice is wrecking communal areas, waking up other tenants by falling down the stairs every other night, and leaving the halls smelling like alcohol and dirty socks.”_ _

__“Why am I getting this lecture now, and not when I first moved in and pissed you off?” His eyebrow was twitching._ _

__“Because _I’m_ being nice by giving you a second chance, and some advice. You’ve already set out to be pissed at Alucard, I assume because the idea of one more person existing in the same living space as you is intolerable to your nature.”_ _

__He puckered his lip, neither accepting nor denying it._ _

__“I’m not your mother, Trevor, I’m not going to yell at you about your mess until you clean it up, but just this once I’m going to extend an olive branch. My personal standards are not high. But I’ve seen Alucard’s rooms, and—”_ _

__“You’ve what?” His tone changed, from sullen to aware, and he lifted his head and sat straight up. “You went into his _rooms_?”_ _

__“If you _suggest_ anything, Trevor, I swear to God I will—” Not incinerate your face. Not incinerate your face. “Not be happy. I went to offer _him_ some baked goods to welcome him to the building — which he ate, by the way — and—”_ _

__“Wait, he— He ate the banana bread?” That seemed to derail Trevor. What did he think Alucard was, she wondered, beyond exasperated. A reverse-vegetarian?_ _

__“What do you think he is, Trevor? A reverse-vegetarian?”_ _

__For a minute they both just stared at each other, his face equal parts torn and mystified, or possibly constipated. She was beginning to think there was no rhyme or reason to his confusion. Trevor Belmont was just, at the most fundamental level, both baffling and baffled._ _

__“Look.” She pressed her fingers against her temples. “All I’m trying to say, is that you should give him a chance. Give human _decency_ a chance. Because if you don’t, you’re going to get kicked out. And I’m not going to feel that bad about it.”_ _

__Trevor sank back into his chair, crossed his arms again, and they mirrored each other’s expressions of near-dislike and suspicion. “And the banana bread?” He extended a hand at it._ _

__“It’s a housewarming gift. Eat some.”_ _

__With the exact amount of grace and refinement she expected from him, Trevor tore off a chunk with his bare hands and shoved it in his mouth. His eyebrows popped up in surprise. “Does this have walnuts in it?” he asked with his mouth full. The surprise ingredient seemed to have disarmed him._ _

__“That’s how my grandfather always made it. Problem?”_ _

__He paused to pick a bit of walnut out his teeth. “No. It’s good.” They both watched her anger deflate and slowly waft to the floor. Into the cooler air he tried again, warily asking “So… the basement. What’s he got in there?”_ _

__He had never been so curious about her part of the building, she thought, not sure why it irritated her. “Oh, you know, lots of BDSM gear—” He choked on a walnut. “—I’m kidding! It’s normal. He has a lot of books.” And wall hangings, and oak furniture, and velvet. She could only imagine Trevor’s reaction to that. Probably an allergic one._ _

__“Books about what?”_ _

__“Plants, history.” She didn’t mention Alucard’s book on occult magics, the same way she didn’t mention her own books on occult magics, the collection of which would rival Alucard’s. “Why are you so curious? What would you think he had in there?”_ _

__“Nothing,” he said, picking his teeth again and looking evasively at the ceiling. “Don’t you think it’s a little… dangerous, to go into a strange man’s room? Especially when they’re in a fucking basement? When has anything good ever happened in a basement? Just in general,” he added hastily when she glared, raising his hands. “Not, like, for woman reasons. People are — generally speaking — horrible pieces of shit. Who knows what kind of skeletons he has in his closet? Or, buried in the fucking backyard. Who the hell knows? You wouldn’t just come into _my_ rooms, and you _know_ me.”_ _

___Do I?_ Sypha felt she could count the things she knew about Trevor Belmont on one hand. One, his name was Trevor Belmont. Allegedly. Two, he lived in the same building as her. Most of the time. Three, he had a driver’s license. Or maybe he didn’t. She wouldn’t put it past him to be driving on a suspended license, or never having gotten one at all. Actually, that wouldn’t surprise her at all, based on his parking. Four, he liked walnuts in his banana bread. And that was it._ _

__“You would never invite me into your rooms,” she pointed out. “But you’re right. I can only imagine what you have in _your_ closets, skeletons aside.”_ _

__—_ _

__His corkboard needed some serious revising._ _

__Trevor stood scrutinizing it, occasionally reaching out to relocate a strand of yarn and then pulling his hand back, mind changed. Before, it had all been relatively organized, because every factor was either vague and unchanging (like Dracula, sitting in his corner, as a fanged face on a sticky note, tongue sticking out) or specific and quickly traced and remedied (like the wereboar, fought in the basement of a preschool across town, its tongue in a plastic baggie he’d lost somewhere, some of its blood still stinking up a jacket that he’d actually really liked). Now that he had something that required actual research, the board was a mess of too many pushpins and sticky notes with question marks on them. At the center of the board was a large, scrawled ‘ALUCARD?’._ _

__Below it was a sticky note that read _‘banana bread?’_._ _

__He leaned in and drummed his fingers on the wall. So… vampire? Not vampire? _‘Books’_ shouted vampire to him, which probably said something about him as a person, but then, Sypha had books, and there was nothing supernatural about her._ _

__He drummed his fingers again._ _

___Could_ vampires eat human food? He supposed he had always just assumed they couldn’t, but he was no expert on vampire anatomy. Especially the digestive bits. This raised all sorts of questions. If a vampire could stomach human food, could they survive off of it? Could it sustain them? How long could a vampire feed off banana bread and not blood? Come to think of it, how long could a vampire sustain itself without blood in general?_ _

__God, this would be so much simpler if he could just go down there with a stake. But he didn’t even know if the ‘landlord’ was in yet._ _

__He drummed his fingers on the wall again, then picked up his can of lukewarm Monster and crossed to the window to peel down the blinds and take a drink. He looked broodingly out over the street, gray with moonlight._ _

___Where the hell does he park his car?_ _ _

__His phone buzzed on the bed, lighting up its cradle of chip remnants and dirty t-shirts. Trevor tossed back the Monster, crushed the can against the window frame, and threw it into the trash corner to scoop up his phone._ _

____**Sypha**  
Hello  
**Sypha**  
Thought a group chat would be a good idea 

__His eyelid twitched. He couldn’t tell what bothered him the most— that she had an arguably good point about his manners in general, or that she had a good point about what his next move should be. There really was only one way to figure out the true nature of the man downstairs. The worst way._ _

__Human conversation._ _

__He could be polite, Trevor supposed. He could even be _friendly_ if that’s what it took. He was only tactless because he _chose_ to be— he told himself. If he put in an effort, he was positive he could unearth the information he needed through casual conversation. And, through the magic of texting, he didn’t even need to be face to face to do with it._ _

__Actually, it was a great idea._ _

____**Trevor**  
ok  
**Trevor**  
ill chat w the bastard  
**Trevor**  
jst dont expect me to kiss his ass 

__His phone buzzed again a moment later._ _

__**Alucard**  
I don’t think either of us wants that._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you hate walnuts in your banana bread keep your feelings to yourself
> 
> 'Máš přítelkyni?' means 'do you have a girlfriend?'
> 
> 'Můžete to zopakovat?' is basically 'what did you say?/I didn't understand that'


	5. WHAT'S IN THE BOXXXXX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trevor meets Alucard. They get along great! just kidding

Sypha nearly broke down his door.

Trevor yanked it open before she had the chance, leaving her reeling with the momentum of her banging fist, and before she could yell, cut her off with a violent stage whisper. “I know! I know! What do you think, I did it on purpose?”

“It’s _worse_ that you did it on accident!” she hissed back. “Because that shows just how dense you really are! What is _wrong_ with you? Were you raised by wolves?”

“Well, in a sense—”

“No! Shut up! I don’t want to hear your big secret backstory now, I’m too mad at you.”

He stuck his finger in her face, anger boiling over into his already red face, and then realized he had no retort. “I— You— You didn’t tell me it was a group chat.”

“Give me your phone.” She held out her hand. He gave her his phone. She pulled up the chat, scrolled, and held it up in front of his face. “Do you see what that says at the top of the text? It says _two_ , Trevor. Two people. I’m sure even you can count that high.”

“Yeah, _two_ , you and me.” He pointed back and forth between them. “One. Two. Two people.”

“If it was just me, it would just say _‘Sypha’_ at the top.” She shoved the phone back into his hands.

“And I’m supposed to know this how?”

“By being a functional human being with critical thinking skills, but I guess that’s beyond you.” But Sypha had already moved along mentally, the last jab given totally offhand. She tapped her finger on her lower lip, thinking hard. “We can fix this. Alucard doesn’t know you’re a _total_ cretin—”

“Wow.”

She ignored him. “—we just need a way to show him there’s something redeemable under the cretinous exterior.”

“Thanks,” said Trevor. “You’re so helpful.”

“I’ve got it,” she said, and brightened. “It’s perfect, actually. You can finally put those stupid biceps to some good use.”

He frowned. “It’s not—?”

“You’re going to help him move in.”

—

Alucard had been right.

Neither of them wanted this.

Trevor could not be counted as a ‘people person’, let alone an…. ‘inhuman monster with a face projecting a malevolent facade of humanity person’. Faced with facing said inhuman monster, he found that if he was ill equipped to have basic conversation with Sypha, he was definitely worse equipped to have conversation with someone he assumed but could not yet prove was a blood sucking creature of the night. It would have been much easier if he knew for a fact that this Alucard was a vampire; he could just walk in, say ‘hello neighbor!’, and stake him.

Before heading down, he stopped to check his profile in his toothpaste spattered bathroom mirror, trying to decide if it was obvious he was packing stakes, or if it just looked like he had a big dick. A big, oddly pointy dick. He rifled around in his boxers until he was satisfied with his reflection.

Dust crept along the windowsill like a shadow, and in the cooling air outside, he heard a familiar car door slam.

_That’ll be the bastard, then._

As if on cue, his phone buzzed.

**Sypha**  
He’s here.

**Sypha**  
Are your stupid biceps ready to be helpful?

Oh, he was ready.

Trevor flipped down his blinds to watch the figure cross the street and pass out of view, under the roof of the porch. _Tall fucker._ In the light of the ending day, he was just lines, looking taller for his shadow, and then the shadow, lying behind him like a tail, vanished under the porch, too.

He flipped down his blinds.

One last glance in the mirror, making sure the stakes, consecrated knives, and rosary were tucked away and hidden under his parka, and Trevor unlocked his whole door, and locked it all the way up behind him, like zipping up a jacket.

The upstairs hallway was always ominous this time of day, this transition from sunlight to night. At the end of the hall was a floor-to-ceiling window that had once held some kind of stained glass pattern, though it was stained out of its original colors, and looked like someone had punted an iron soccer ball right into the center of it. It wasn’t broken, but cracks spiraled through the whole thing.

End of the day, as the sun hit just the right spot, it poured through the stained glass and the light managed to reach all the way down the hall. The warmth of it struck his ankles and rose to chest height; he knew that if he stood here longer, he would feel it creep slowly to his face, until it flared in his eyes, and filled the whole hall.

Curious time for a vampire to be about, with the son not quite gone. Son of a bitch must have layered up. That or he was ballsy.

Dangerous.

Trevor took the spiraling stair down, and reached the point where the front door came into view just as it opened. He stopped, still largely in shadow.

Trevor saw the hand on the doorknob, first, and oh, did that hand scream ‘vampire’.

Very pale. Long fingers. The kind of long, tapered fingers that said ‘Nosferatu’ and also somehow ‘hand model’. He’d seen the like before.

But the person (person?) that followed the hand into the foyer was not like any coffin fodder he’d seen before. 

If Trevor had the ability to recognize good taste or sense money, he would have. Instead, he was struck cold with a reservation over the man’s clothes… clean. Fitted. His shirt was _white_.

And… the hair. There was a lot of it— more than Sypha’s. It was just as confusingly clean and neat as the rest of him, and the way Alucard reached up to casually tuck it behind his ear was even more confusing, because of the pure humanity in the gesture.

Alucard didn’t seem to have noticed him; balancing a box on his hip in another very casually human gesture, he turned to close the door. Trevor’s pulse plucked; a scattered ray of sunshine glanced through the window on the stair, and fell on that pale throat in a thick white line. For a second he fully expected blood to well up on the spot, and smoke to puff out, and for Alucard to clap a hand over his throat with a vampiric snarl. But nothing happened.

Trevor finally unclenched.

Then Alucard looked directly at him.

His body remained languid. He didn’t shift the box on his hip, or even turn his head more than half an inch, but his eyes found Trevor’s unerringly on the stair, so unerringly he had to have known he was there, perhaps even before he was through the door. His face was expressionless, sculpted, but the eyes… gold sparked under each heavy eyelid, like drops of candlelight.

An ancestral thrill went up Trevor’s spine, and he felt the temptation of the stake pressed against his thigh.

That was a fucking vampire if he’d ever seen one.

But, if he was a vampire, pointed out one of Trevor’s less abused braincells, how had he tolerated the sunlight?

_It should have at least left a mark…_

The pale throat was unmarred. Not a single blister.

“Alucard!”

They both looked away and up; Sypha had come out of her room and down the stairs, and _she_ met Alucard beaming. God.

“Ah, Sypha.” He smiled, and handed her the box. “I was able to dig them out after all. There’s plenty left back at the storage unit, but this is all the Bruno. I think it’s only missing _The Heroic Frenzies_ and _Dream Interpretation_ ; if I find those, I promise you’ll get your hands on them.”

“I can’t believe you had all of this just lying around,” she said, adjusting the box to wrap her arms around it.

“If you’re ever in the mood for some lighter reading, I also stumbled across _The Tale of Tom Kitten_ ,” he said drily.

What the hell were they talking about?

“Trevor should be down soon,” she said, and he bristled at her tone, not because it was rude, but because it advertised a totally false confidence in him. As if any of them really believed that she believed he would show up on time.

“I’m right here,” he said loudly, and descended the stairs.

Sypha scowled, but only with her eyebrows, still trying to maintain some false neighborly appearance towards him. Why bother? The vampire, or not-vampire, of course regarded him with cool unsurprise; he had known he was there all along.

Trevor eyed him on level ground; they were about the same height. Alucard’s boots gave him maybe a half inch’s dominance over Trevor’s flip flops.

He crossed his arms. “You must be the landlord.”

“And you must be the Belmont.” Alucard, or Adrian Tepes, or whatever he was, put out his hand with a colorless smile. “Pleasure.”

Was Trevor imagining the small suspicion in Alucard’s face? Or was it only his own suspicion, mirrored? Or, was it the restrained dislike of a man who clearly dry cleaned his clothes, having to make nice with a man who clearly didn’t, and who had already called him a bastard over text?

_‘I don’t think either of us wants that.’_

Trevor didn’t like or trust the other man, but God if he didn’t feel his exact psychic twin at that moment, as Sypha’s very presence dictated the handshake, as surely as if she held a gun to each of their heads.

Alucard’s hand was warm as he shook it. Trevor tried to remember; had the vampires he’d taken out before been cold? He hadn’t exactly taken the time to feel them up, but he was _sure_ they had been cold.

Sypha watched their first meeting like a hawk, as if she expected Trevor to have spit in his palm or something, or for him to try Alucard’s strength with a hard squeeze. And, yeah, it was tempting. But Trevor was going to play nice. When he decided he was done with nice, he had the stake for that.

“So, where’s the rest of your shit?”

Sypha facepalmed, but Alucard only smiled, and nodded behind him. “Back in the car.”

They walked out into the dark together, footsteps thudding lightly down the porch steps and crunching down the walk. Alucard had his hands stowed in his pockets and he looked up as they walked, not at Trevor but at the stars overhead. Trevor put his hands in his pockets, too, to keep them from itching for the consecrated silver.

“So which is it, Adrian or Alucard?”

It was hard to see in the dark if the other man had ditched the smile or not. “Alucard is fine.”

“That a nickname, or something?”

“Or something.”

The voice in the dark was so bland, it could have been polite, or it could have been the rude version of dry. Trevor’s tic of suspicion made him lean towards rude, but the rational voice in his head, the one that had kept him from getting killed by werewolves or overdosing on cough syrup (and the one that was increasingly taking on a Sypha-like tone) pointed out that ‘Alucard’ had no reason to be polite or revealing to him, a stranger, and a rude stranger at that.

What a pain in the ass. He changed his mind again; human conversation was the worst way to find out information.

_Beep beep._ Alucard pressed a button on the key fob and popped the trunk. 

“Watch that one,” he said, pointing to a large box half-buried. “It’s heavy.”

“More books?” Trevor noted with disappointment that there was nothing coffin-shaped to be unloaded.

“Or something.”

Trevor glared at Alucard’s back.

Alucard ignored him, leaning into the trunk, eyes flicking over the boxes. The light of the trunk and the fainter light of the streetlight a few houses down made his pale skin more ghostly, the yellow hair more ivory. The corpse vibes were there. But his expression — sensitive, thinking — read as straight human. Trevor could practically see him deciding how to arrange the china. All at once this was boring; he felt like any poor slob roped into helping a stranger move in because of an accidentally douchey text. He watched Alucard run one of those long fingers down the seam of a box, saw something nostalgic run a pang through his shoulders.

The scene reeked of sentiment. He hated it.

“Okay,” said Trevor loudly. “What do you want me to carry first?”

Alucard looked over his shoulder at him, the ghost of ‘vampire’ renewing in the faint curl of his lip. “Here.” Without ceremony, he shoved a random box into Trevor’s arms. “Sypha can show you where it goes.”

Trevor resisted the urge to shove right back at him, hefting the box instead. Something clinked inside of it. “What’s in here?” he asked.

Whatever patience Alucard had been harboring finally withered. He straightened up, hand on the lid of the trunk like he was ready to slam it, and glowered for the first time. If looks could kill, Trevor would have needed to get the stakes out. “I don’t think,” he said flatly, outlining every syllable. “That’s any of your business.”

_Well, that’s not suspicious at all._ What the hell was in the box?

Trevor didn’t respond, because he had a better idea. He didn’t bother to fake a smile (his mouth didn’t know how to do that, anyway) or apologize, just turned around to head back up the walk towards the house. He waited until he reached the bottom step of the porch, thinking of all the little vampire things that made clinking noises. Vials of blood, maybe? That would be clever of him. Collect your blood in advance, don’t have to hunt. He could have gallons of it stored, giving him an invisible footprint in the area, flying under the radar.

But a Belmont wasn’t so easily fooled.

“Oops,” he said, very loudly.

He pretended to trip on the bottom step, letting the box fall out of his arms. The shattering sound rang in the quiet street. Trevor waited, eyes riveted, for a pool of vile juices to begin swelling out from under the cardboard. For the evidence.

When nothing happened, and the box sat silent, without even screaming spirits escaping from cursed containers or whatever the fuck else a vampire’s box might contain, Trevor frowned. He bent down and pulled open one of the flaps of cardboard.

Inside were framed pictures. The top photo was of a beautiful blonde woman, smiling at the camera, arms wrapped around a little equally blonde kid, making a cross expression. It was covered now in broken glass.

“Ahhhh” said Trevor. “Shit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my SO has been holding my onesie hostage for a week now because I didn't update. but i did now. fuck you dizzy i want my onesie back


	6. alas poor yorick

He couldn’t know that Sypha heard him drop the box, but he _knew_ that she somehow knew, and his first fear wasn’t _‘shit, what if I’ve just pissed off a vampire’_ or even the more reasonable _‘this probably human being is going to be very upset that I've broken something with clear emotional value’_ but instead, _‘Sypha is going to mangle me’_.

Trevor didn’t think she was tall enough to strangle him, but he was confident she would find a way.

A different man might not have heard Alucard’s soft footsteps coming up the walk, but Trevor was attuned to all things soft and sneaky. He turned only partly as Alucard’s face came half into the porchlight. The other man was balancing a box on his hip, his expression oddly neutral. He looked down at the shattered glass, and though Trevor tried to read the fuck out of him, the man was unfathomable.

“Uh,” said Trevor. “Sorry.”

Alucard’s eyes were yellow glass. “Butterfingers, I imagine?” The voice, straight ice. Trevor felt that little thrill again, meeting those eyes, like a little sniffer dog in his soul was jumping up and down going _‘vampire! vampire!’_

The front door opened and ah, there was Sypha. The concern in her eyes said that she had heard something, probably the shattering of glass. She gathered the scene.

“What happened?” Her voice and eyes accused Trevor in unison. He puffed himself up defensively, though she couldn’t have been more right.

“Our Belmont here dropped a box,” said Alucard, in a nearly sympathetic voice, like someone talking about a toddler whose idiocy really couldn’t be helped.

Trevor’s hackles raised even more — _‘Our’_ Belmont’?

“My bad,” he said, teeth gritted together in a fake smile that could be called a genial cringe at best.

“It happens,” said Alucard, this time his tone much more generous and his eyes kinder, a stark contrast now that Sypha was looking on. “There are worse things you could have dropped. Broken frames can be replaced.”

“I should have warned you,” said Sypha, crossing her arms. “He’s kind of a—”

“—Butterfingers?”

The close, conspiratorial way they finished each other’s sentences was _galling_. 

“Make sure he doesn’t drop this one?” Alucard thumped another box into his chest without looking at him. Sypha took another, again, all without looking at Trevor, but all smiles for Alucard.

The smile evaporated as soon as she and Trevor were over the threshold.

“You did that on purpose!”

“How did you know?”

“Oh! So you _did_ do it on purpose. I can’t believe you!”

“I— you—”

She rounded on him, using her box to pin him against the wall, as much as someone that her height and weight could. The efficacy was 90% intimidation. He didn’t want to risk pushing her away; he thought she might bite his hand off. “What could you possibly have to gain from making him angry? Is this— is it some ‘man’ thing? Some pissing contest? You have to know whose dick is bigger?”

“I’m pretty sure mine is bigger.”

“Do you realize the utter fruitlessness in trying to mark your territory when he literally owns the building?” She gestured at the roof over their heads.

“Since when are you two so close?” he countered. “What’s with the little book club, anyway?”

“I think you’re confusing ‘basic human kindness’ for closeness, Trevor. It’s _nice_ to have someone I can carry on a conversation with.”

She turned on her heel and walked off down the hall. They were going to the same place so he couldn’t even storm off; he had to follow her, hating it. God, she walked fast for someone with such short little legs.

It wasn’t until they passed through Alucard’s door that his pissiness fully dissippated, in shock.

Could he have made the basement look any _more_ like a lair of the undead?

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he said. Red wall hangings? _Red?_

Sypha put her box down and put her hands on her hips, and raised her eyebrows in that ‘waiting for Trevor to say his something stupid’ way. It was his turn to gesture at the ceiling. “You don’t think this is a little…” What was the word? Cliche vampire? A little gay? A lot overdramatic? Like they were on the set of Nosferatu? “Excessive?”

“What’s excessive is the amount of detritus I can see in your room, just from your doorway,” she said. She sighed, and rubbed her temples. “Can we make peace for like… ten minutes?”

“I’m perfectly peaceful,” he said obstinately.

She sat down on Alucard’s stupid, ridiculous frou-frou couch and patted the cushion next to her.

_Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me._

Trevor sat down next to her. He was instantly uncomfortable; the couch didn’t have any lumps, no stuffing coming out, no popped seams. He felt like he was getting it dirty just sitting on it. And— well, it was a small couch, and he couldn’t turn entirely to face Sypha, not without feeling like they were sitting-on-a-bench-in-a-tiny-garden, face-to-face too close.

“Why are we sitting here?”

“You ever take a moment to just sit down and relax? Maybe not think the worst of people for a few minutes?”

“No.”

—

Alucard finished disposing of the glass.

He threw the box in the dumpster around the corner, letting the grime of the side street remind him of how far home had gone. The garbage smell was almost intolerable to his heightened senses, but the power of it blocked out everything else for a moment, and for that moment he was almost happy to feel nothing but disgust. Being disgusted by garbage was easier than examining the mental image of the broken glass over his mother’s face, and the haze of grief that had set a veil over him again.

You never really stopped feeling things; one of the most unfortunate aspects of a lengthened existence, Alucard supposes.

Perhaps that was why his father slept.

Did he escape the memory of his wife, in those dreams?

 _Ding_ , said his phone.

Well, the garbage had been a nice break.

He swiped open the group chat.

 **Sypha**  
We’re ordering pizza. Trevor’s treat.

 **Sypha**  
What’s your stance on pineapple

 **Alucard**  
On pizza?

 **Trevor**  
its the best

—

The pizza box sat on the coffee table between them with the foreboding air of an untouched ouija board.

Trevor sat on the floor, legs crossed and shoulders hunched, brow heavy and pinched like a cro-magnon’s, looking less like he wanted to sit on the floor and more like he just didn’t want to touch any of Alucard’s furniture.

Alucard sat on the floor as well, but in an aloof way, in an ‘I own the place, I’ll sit on the floor if I want’ way.

Sypha sat on the chaise because she was determined for there to be at least one normal-acting human being in the room.

She didn’t like the way Trevor and Alucard weren’t eyeing each other. They were like two cats in a room, facing opposite directions, but hyperaware of each other and ready to start hissing and batting paws at any moment.

“Thanks for the pizza,” she told Trevor, who only glared back; she had practically wrestled the cash out of his wallet.

“Yes, thank you Trevor,” said Alucard, whose tone was exactly as polite as it needed to be. To an outside observer he might have seemed friendly, but Sypha had seen him be actually friendly. This wasn’t it.

 _Well, either they’re going to get along, or they’re not._ She reached for a slice.

“Absolutely no problem, Alucard,” said Trevor. _Yikes._ His fake-friendly was so sarcastic it was actually aggressive. “Have some garlic bread, why don’t you?” He held out the box with the air of Hamlet hefting the skull of poor Yorick.

Alucard only stared at him. Then he said, “I’m good.”

Why did Trevor look as though Alucard had somehow bested him by refusing the extra carbs? Was this, too, part of the pissing contest?

Sypha ate her pizza.

“You really cleaned this place up,” said Trevor. Sypha looked at him out of the corner of her eye, wary of whatever turn this was going to take.

“Hmm,” said Alucard. “I didn’t think it seemed especially ‘clean’. Perhaps you’re confusing ‘clean’ with simply ‘not dirty’?”

 _What the hell?_ He was right, Trevor and everything he owned needed a deep clean and a layer of hand sanitizer, but she hadn’t expected Alucard to get so snarky so quickly. Apparently neither of them had come to play.

“You pick out those throw pillows yourself?”

Sypha tried to communicate to Trevor with her eyes that if he didn’t shut up, he was going to get one of those pillows to the throat.

She may as well have not been in the room, as far as the two of them and their pissing contest were concerned.

Trevor kept going. “And the uh, the big curtains on the walls?”

Alucard cracked open his soda with the same motion as snapping a small animal’s neck. “Problem?” He asked mildly. “Would you have picked a different pattern, maybe?”

“I don’t really have opinions on that kind of thing,” said Trevor flippantly. “It’s just interesting. So are you really into, uh, interior design?”

Sypha choked on her Dr. Pepper. Trevor couldn’t have implied the ‘are you gay?’ any louder than if he had shouted it through a pink megaphone.

“I dabble,” said Alucard, utterly cool. “That attitude is too bad; I think it’s a little pathetic when people are close-minded about… interior design.”

“I’m not close-minded,” said Trevor, growing heated.

“No? So you’re also interested in interior design?”

Trevor turned as red as the pizza sauce. He chugged half his soda. “We should have gotten beer,” he muttered.

—

The rest of the pizza disappeared into a silence enforced by embarrassment. Sypha found that merciful; the tension was there, but it was the tension of virtual strangers navigating an extremely awkward situation, and no longer infused with that boy-meets-boy, raw, dicks-out antagonism.

“Well this has been great,” said Trevor, loudly and without making eye contact with either of them, picking up the empty box. “I’ll just go toss this in the trash—”

“Nope.” Sypha snagged him by the sleeve. “We’re going to help Alucard finish unpacking.”

“I really don’t think that’s necessary,” said Alucard, and before, she might have spared him, but after watching him fling mud right back at Trevor, she was feeling a little less sympathetic.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “You have so many boxes.”

They were surrounded by them. There were little pyramids of boxes in the corners. They couldn’t all hold books; honestly, Sypha’s curiosity was piqued, moreso by the wary look that came into Alucard’s eyes. She hadn’t seen him… wary, before. It wasn’t evasive as if he were embarrassed, like some of the skeletons in his closet were actually dildos. It was the look of someone guarded. Someone wondering, she thought, if they could be trusted.

She caught him by the sleeve, too, as they got up, and swapped glances. Her smile was reassuring.

Something in it managed to convince him; maybe the bond between readers of the occult was working in her favor. He smiled too, very briefly.

Trevor glared.

“If you don’t mind,” said Alucard.

The first of the boxes held no hidden treasures or objects of curiosity, only banal human things, which Trevor observed with obvious disappointment. He seemed to be looking for dirt on Alucard under every packing peanut, scowling when he uncovered only normal, everyday objects. It seemed like he was still trying to give Sypha a reason to distrust the guy. When was he gonna give it up?

When he did, it seemed like he only did out of boredom.

“So where are you hiding the good stuff, huh, Alucard?” He turned a lamp over in his hands. “The bondage gear? Gimp suit? Bong? Oh, I’m sorry, ‘water pipe’.” He used finger quotes.

“Better reread your lease agreement, Belmont,” said Alucard, not looking up from the cutlery set he was unpacking. “I think you’ll find illicit drugs are listed under ‘not allowed’, next to dogs and loud music after 11.”

“Well you’re gonna be real fucking fun to have around the house,” said Trevor.

“It’s my house, Belmont.”

Trevor made a noise of disgust. “Don’t remind me— Oh, holy shit.”

Sypha and Alucard both looked up. What Alucard had been wary about was suddenly made clear; Trevor was holding up what looked like a real human skull.

“What the hell is this?” His eyes were wide in his head. Looking as though he was acting on pure impulse, he actually stuck his fingers in the eyesockets.

“My father’s,” said Alucard.

When they both stared at him, he amended, “My father’s _property_.” He came and took the skull from Trevor, turning it over so they could see the neat cursive labeling the different sutures and processes. “He was a physician.”

Trevor’s expression changed, and Sypha frowned. She hadn’t seen that face before. She hadn’t realized Trevor could look… sober.

“‘Was’?” For once, Trevor seemed to be choosing his words, instead of just reacting.

“He’s not dead, if that’s what you’re asking,” said Alucard.

“...retired, then?” Again, Trevor looked careful.

“You could say that.”

Something went dark in the corners of Alucard’s eyes; even tactless Trevor saw it, opened his mouth, and bit his tongue. He looked at Sypha.

Alucard turned the skull over again, running his finger along the top until it reached a perfectly round hole on the top of it.

“I didn’t break it,” muttered Trevor.

Alucard actually smiled briefly. “It’s not broken… it’s trepanned.”

“It’s what?”

“Trepanation was the earliest human surgery ever performed,” said Alucard. “There’s evidence for it dating back to the Neolithic period. They would cut or drill a hole into the skull. to relieve pressure. Usually built up after a brain injury. I always found that awe-inspiring, as a child. Thousands of years before anesthesia, before X-rays, and human beings still found such incredible ways to save each other. It’s amazing what people are capable of.”

They were all silent for a minute. Trevor was the one to break it.

“When I mentioned skeletons in the closet,” he said. “I wasn’t talking about… actual skeletons.”

Alucard tossed it back to him. Trevor startled, but caught it. Alucard smiled again. “It’s not real, Belmont. Just a medical model.”

“Still kind of creepy,” muttered Trevor, and put it gently back into its box

—

A crunched up can of Monster lay somewhere under Trevor’s sheets, digging into his foot, and he toed it aimlessly and stared up at the ceiling of his room. For the first time, he was aware of how bad the mess was. Like, it was one thing to casually live in it, but it was different after spending hours in a room where the worst mess was a bunch of cardboard boxes, and even those were thoughtfully stacked.

Alucard and his throw pillows had been right. Trevor had been confusing ‘not dirty’ with ‘clean’. And his room wasn’t either.

He ran his hand over the back of his head, right where that skull had had its hole punched.

Dracula the doctor, eh?

Trevor wasn’t sure he believed that, just like he wasn’t sure that he trusted Alucard even a bit. No way that son of a bitch was human. Not at all the way. He had too much inhuman shine about him. But whatever he was, it made room for sunlight, garlic bread, and… feelings.

He gnawed a fingernail.

_So what now?_

No matter what he thought about Alucard, he decided— even if he didn’t expect to wake up with the guy’s teeth at his throat, he wasn’t willing to take that risk with Sypha. He _liked_ Sypha, for all her bossiness, and stealing of pizza money. He didn’t like most people. Or, they didn’t like him. Most of the time it was both. For once, he had found a human being who mostly tolerated him, and who he tolerated back, and even if she owed him twenty bucks, she didn’t deserve to die a terrible, blood-sucking death for it.

He flipped open his phone to check the group chat. Nobody had said anything new into the uneasy peace the pizza had delivered. Maybe Alucard and Sypha both, like him, weren’t sure to do with this new dynamic.

Trevor eventually drifted off, and didn’t wake up when his phone buzzed around 2 AM, but he wouldn’t have been able to read the message, anyway.

—

Alucard, burning the midnight oil yet again, was awake to check his phone when it went _ding_. He put down his book (The _Kitāb al-Manāẓir_ ) and picked up his phone, swiping into the group chat. He smiled. Sypha had sent only one thing: the skull emoji.


	7. the pipes... the pipes are calling...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> weird noises :/

Alucard didn’t need to sleep, strictly speaking, not the way a normal human did. He sometimes wondered how the hell they had accomplished so much as a species, losing a third of the day to lying about drooling.

Not, that, admittedly, he spent all of his extra hours devoted to scholarly pursuits. And, well, there was a Golden Girls marathon on.

About six episodes in, his eyeing were glazing over as the same infomercial played for the hundredth time, and he found his thoughts drifting to the group text, and his housemates.

Were they going to be a problem? He wondered.

Trevor seemed to harbor suspicions, and not just the suspicion of a misanthrope for any stranger’s presence. No… his particular guarded air meant either Trevor sensed, or thought he sensed, something inhuman about— or, he was nursing a crush on Sypha and resentful of their rapport.

Or both.

Never one to take the higher ground, Alucard liked Sypha’s last message and shot back an emoji of his own.

Surprisingly, Sypha responded right away.

**S**  
Hey, did you arrange for any middle of the night repairs

**A**  
I did not  
**A**  
Are you hearing any?

**S**  
You don’t hear that?

He paused mid-commercial and listened. He didn’t hear the telltale clinking and grumbling of repairmen, and nor should he have had; he didn’t have anything scheduled until Wednesday.

What he did hear was a loud and resonant tapping.

It sounded like footsteps.

But… he frowned. It wasn’t coming from upstairs. It was coming, somehow, from below.

Alucard got up and went to press his ear to the wall. Almost immediately the sound stopped, but its echoes persisted, in a long, hollow way revealing the presence of some unknown chamber.

That… wasn’t possible.

**S**  
Gone now  
**S**  
Pipes?

**A**  
Probably.

He tossed his phone onto his sheets and stared at the well. On a strange instinct, one with origins long forgotten in the tumults of childhood, he swept aside one of the hangings and ran his fingers over the wall. He sensed, rather than felt, a difference in the drywall, and with a lengthened fingernail he slit it open, and pulled the plaster apart with his hands. Dust sifted to the floor.

Behind the wall, which must have been installed sometime between those strange memories of childhood and now, Alucard found a door.

Flush with the wall, it had no knob, no hinges. It was only a thick panel of some dark metal, dingy with an age suggested it had originated elsewhere, covered in cracked Enochian symbols.

Staring at it, fingers tracing the faded runes, Alucard thought glibly to himself, _‘So much for easily flipping the old family home.’_

—

By the time Trevor finished tearing the kitchen apart to find the cereal (Sypha had put it, very sensibily, in the cupboard by the sink with the other cereals, probably to avoid falling off chairs in the hunt for poptarts again), scrubbed the grime out of a bowl and spoon, he didn’t even have the energy to be mad when he opened the fridge and found that there was no milk.

Trevor sat gamely down to eat his dry, crunchy cereal largely out of obstinance.

“What happened to milk?” he fired off at Sypha the minute she came through the kitchen door, freshly showered, hair still wet.

“Good morning to you, too,” she said acidly. She went to the sink to fill a mug with hot water. “I threw it out. It was expired— just like half the contents of the fridge. Please tell me you weren’t still eating that yogurt.”

“What was wrong with it?”

She squinched her brow. It looked painful. “You’re lucky that cereal’s still there,” she said. “That’s expired, too. Isn’t it stale?”

“Yeah?” What was her point?

She just rolled her eyes and sat down, popping a teabag in her bug. “When was the last time you ate a fruit or vegetable?” He opened his mouth. “That _wasn’t_ a pizza topping.” He closed his mouth. He only opened it again to grumpily put cereal in it.

“Did you check the group chat?”

Oh yeah.

He flipped open his phone to scan their texts.

“You didn’t hear anything?” she asked.

“Nope.” He didn’t say he’d been out, still on the hunt for holy water, though it was a half-hearted hunt at this point. Vampire or not, he thought if sunlight didn’t bother this guy, holy water wasn’t going to pack much of a punch. Maybe he should try just punching him. “You sure it wasn’t just old house shit? Or walking suits of armor. That seems about right for an old spookfest like this.”

As usual, Alucard showed up just as the worst possible words were leaving his mouth. Alucard, looking runway ready as always, shot him a glare from the door as he came in. Trevor glared right back. Sypha rolled her eyes.

“So what’s with the noise, Alucard?” Trevor shot at him. “What was that you said before? No loud noises after eleven?”

“I think you already answered your own question, Belmont,” said Alucard mildly, also going for a mug of hot water and a teabag. “Weren’t the walking suits of armor mentioned somewhere on the ad?”

Sypha hid a smile behind her hand. Trevor mimicked Alucard’s words in silence while his back was turned.

“There will be repairs soon, though, Belmont,” said Alucard, turning back around and leaning on the counter. His eyes were piercing gold in the morning light. “When is a good time for strangers to come inspect the state of your rooms? Which I assume are full of very normal things, not gimp suits, or whatever it was you said before, which I’m sure wasn’t a projection on your part...”

Trevor pointed his spoon at Alucard. “At least I don’t have human skulls just hanging around.”

“Animal skulls, then?” asked Alucard, at the same time Sypha reminded him, “It was a medical model, Trevor.”

“Animal skulls are less weird than human skulls, even fake ones,” said Trevor. “Plenty of people have deer skulls mounted on their walls.”

“Are yours mounted?” asked Alucard. “I was imagining them kicking around under your bed with the dust bunnies, and whichever socks are supposed to match those you’re wearing right now.”

“Anyone who makes sure to match their socks every morning has too much time on their hands,” said Trevor loudly, just as Sypha said, “So we’re really doing this, huh?” into her mug of tea.

“How about this?” Sypha put her mug down hard enough to interrupt them both. “Trevor, I’ll help you clean up your place, lie to Alucard about how not disgusting it was, then he can get the inspection over with, and you guys never have to talk except via text again. How’s that sound?”

Trevor opened his mouth to object. Sypha didn’t let him. “You have twenty-four hours to get the worst of the dirty magazines out.”

It wasn’t the dirty anything he was worried about.

Alucard was looking on keenly, waiting for his objection, his justification for exactly why he kept his rooms so private and locked up.

There was no way out of this.

He could lie to Sypha, he figured. Maybe not to her _face_ , but if he managed to hide everything that might raise questions he’d have to lie about, he was golden.

—

He was wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from glen to glen and o'er the mountainside
> 
> this is late and bad because of depression and all i care about is watching naruto and crying in my car but if i don't update dizzy is going to throw my onesie in the fire and i can't take handle that emotionally right now


End file.
